Peruvian farmer takes climate change fight to European courts
Luciano has spent his whole life watching climate change break the glaciers apart.
Huaraz, Peru: The soft murmur of water trickling from a glacier in the Peruvian Andes into the pale blue lake below is broken by the roar of a chunk of ice breaking off.
Saul Luciano Lliuya, who grew up in these mountains, has spent his whole life watching climate change break the glaciers apart.
Now the 34-year-old Peruvian farmer and mountain guide is suing one of Europe’s largest energy companies, RWE of Germany, for what he says is its role in causing global warming — and putting his hometown and his farm at risk. Luciano looks out his window, which boasts a view of Churup, a 5,400-metre (17,700-foot) peak.
He still remembers when it was covered in snow. Today its summit looks like the head of a bald old man, sparsely covered with tufts of white hair. “It’s a shame the glaciers aren’t the same anymore. We’re losing them to global warming,” Luciano said. “Someone caused this, and those people have to be held responsible. It’s not right to remain silent. The world belongs to all of us, not just the polluters.”
Luciano lives with his wife and two kids, in the northern region of Ancash as his family has done for generations. The mountains that line the horizon are part of the Huascaran National Park, a Unesco World Heritage Site that has lost 30 percent of its snow cover in the past four decades, according to the Peruvian government.
Luciano blames carbon-emitting industries for that. A year ago, at a United Nations climate conference in Peru — the precursor to high-stakes talks currently being held in Paris — he met up with activists from the German environmental group Germanwatch, who helped him come up with a novel answer to the problem. With Germanwatch's help, Luciano is suing RWE, Germany’s number two energy producer and what environmental group calls the “single-greatest CO2 emitter in Europe.”
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